


expiation

by Lirazel



Category: Infinite (Band), K-POP RPF, K-pop, Korean Pop, Kpop-Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 14:10:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're Infinite. They take care of each other, no matter what that requires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	expiation

When the door creaks open, Sunggyu doesn’t have to sit up or open his eyes: he knows who it is. Woohyun had been on him as soon as he walked in the door, doing his best to cheer him up and reassure him, and though Sunggyu has become more fond of Woohyun over the years than he wants to admit, it didn’t really work. Myungsoo had hugged him and said “I love you, hyung,” and it was nice and very Myungsoo, and Sunggyu had patted him on his shoulder and sent him off to play with his camera. Howon and Sungjong had apparently talked about it (or maybe didn’t need to talk about it? Sunggyu’s never sure when it comes to those two) and had acted like it was just another day, not bringing it up at all, which Sunggyu found himself pathetically grateful for, especially when his phone dinged and he found a text that said ‘hyung fighting!’ and an attachment of Sungyeol hanging out of a tree like a monkey. 

It had all been a little too much for Sunggyu after the day he’s had, especially Woohyun, who was so desperate to help that he couldn’t see how much Sunggyu just wanted to be _alone_. He’d retreated to his room as soon as his pride allowed, thankful that Sungjong spends most of his time in Howon’s room and that Myungsoo has been haunting Sungyeol’s while he’s gone. He can hear the TV through the walls, but the room feels blissfully still as he lays on his back, fingers twitching at his earbuds. He’s been debating whether to listen to Nell or not—he always gets caught up in the music in a way nothing else can capture him, but right now hearing Jongwan-sunbae’s voice will probably just remind him that they work for the same company, which will remind him of standing in CEO-nim’s office this morning, which will remind him of the whole sordid thing and how epically stupid he was. And all Sunggyu really wants right now it to _not have to think about it_.

So the intrusion of the door creaking is welcome when it comes. He listens to the padding of bare feet drawing nearer, feels the end of the bed shift and his legs being lifted to allow a lap to slide underneath them. He abandons his earbuds for good, fingers spidering out till they encounter a familiar hand that immediately takes his. Somehow, it helps.

“I really fucked up, Dongwoo.”

Dongwoo can be surprisingly quiet and still when the situation requires it. His voice now is hushed. “Everyone fucks up sometimes, hyung.”

Sunggyu snorts. “You don’t.”

He doesn’t have to open his eyes to know Dongwoo is rolling his. “Hyung, you know that’s not true.”

Sunggyu knows that sometimes Dongwoo gets frustrated with his angelic reputation. ‘It’s just hard to live with, hyung. It makes me feel like if I mess up I’m letting everybody down. Or worse—that if I do something bad, they’ll think it’s not bad just because I’m doing it.’ Doing the right thing seems to come so easily to Dongwoo, all instinct and intuition. For Sunggyu, morality is a series of philosophical questions due careful consideration; for Dongwoo, it seems easy as breathing, like he’d have to actively try to do something wrong instead of just blundering into it like the rest of them. Sometimes Sunggyu is jealous.

“Yeah. Maybe so.”

Dongwoo’s fingers tighten around his and Sunggyu thinks of the contrast of them: they way they look so delicate and pretty but are so much stronger than you’d expect. Just like Dongwoo is so small but just bursting with more life than a giant could contain. 

But sometimes, like now, he puts that life on a dimmer and waits in silence for the sake of the people he cares about. He doesn’t quite manage stillness right now—the pads of his fingers are tapping against Sunggyu’s knuckles and Sunggyu can tell from the slight motion of the mattress that his feet are bouncing. But those little necessary movements are pleasant, like a contented cat’s purr, and they’re just as comforting as the warmth of Dongwoo’s skin, the murmur of his voice.

“It’s just—I _really_ fucked up. I made the company look bad and it’s our first real scandal and I’m the _leader_ and—“

“—and you apologized and you took responsibility. You didn’t try to write it off or blame someone else. It was a good apology, hyung.”

“I’m the _leader_. I’m supposed to be better than this.”

“Then be better than this from now on.”

Sometimes things seem so simply to Dongwoo and it’s so _frustrating_. Even if he never does anything even remotely questionable again, this will always be there, a blot on his name and his group and his company, something for people to drag up and say, ‘Remember that time…?’ And it’s not that that’s unfair. He _said_ it, after all, and so what if Eunji-sunbae knew he was kidding? It was a stupid thing to say, he shouldn’t have said it, and he can’t ask people to forget about it. 

He just wishes _he_ could forget about it.

He rubs at his eyes with his hand that isn’t still holding Dongwoo’s, watches fireworks of colors explode against the backdrop of his eyelids. “Fuck, why did they have to release that footage?”

Dongwoo squeezes his hand. “Maybe they thought it would raise ratings? Controversy does that sometimes. But it was the wrong thing for them to do. Did they apologize?”

“Yeah. PD-nim called me earlier. He did sound like he meant it. But the whole thing is a big fucking mess, Dongwoo.”

He can feel Dongwoo’s clever fingers picking at his cuticles; it would be annoying if anyone else did it. 

“Was it bad, earlier? With CEO-nim?”

Sunggyu lets out a long breath. “He was really disappointed.” Like with parents, disappointment from authority figures is always the worst.

Dongwoo’s clearly thinking along similar lines, because his next question is, “Have you talked to your mom yet?”

Sunggyu shifts his legs, feeling Dongwoo’s beneath them. “Not yet. Noona called earlier, though.” His older sister had been brisk and stern, as usual, making it clear that he was completely out of line. He’d been a good dongsaeng and told her again and again that she was right. It was bad enough, with his sister. He doesn’t even want to think about talking to his mom. She’ll wait for him to call, she’ll listen to his explanation and apology. She’ll never mention it again. But the disappointment….

“It was just a joke, Dongwoo. She knew it was a joke. I know it was a stupid thing to say, I know I shouldn’t have said it, but if she doesn’t care—“

It’s the first time he’s allowed himself to voice this. He’d decided long ago—back when he was a trainee, in fact—how he would handle any controversy that came his way. Genuine apology, no equivocations. Take full responsibility, that’s what it means to be an adult, a leader. He hadn’t considered for a moment taking another route. But it still doesn’t entirely make sense to him, though he’d never say that to anyone else. There are some things he only tells Dongwoo.

“That’s not the point, hyung.” Dongwoo can always explain anything he doesn’t understand. And he can do it without making Sunggyu feel like an idiot. It’s a gift. “It wasn’t about Park Eunji in particular. It was about all women—about that word. It was about you implying there’s something wrong with women who can get men to do things, like it’s especially bad when they’re manipulative when the whole point of the game is to get what you want and be manipulative. When you use words like that, it makes it sound like you don’t respect women.”

“I don’t even know what’s going to make it sound like that, though.”

“So ask me. I’ll tell you.”

He stirs restlessly, flops over on his side, keeping Dongwoo’s hand in his and his legs in Dongwoo’s lap. “I don’t understand women.” He’s said that before, lots of times, a joke. ‘Women—what do they want?’ It’s something men say to each other, in exasperation. But sometimes Sunggyu suspects it isn’t a joke at all, that he really is blind to something fundamental that will explain everything there is to know about women and until he figures out what that is he’ll keep fucking up—or the girls will keep leaving him.

“That’s just it, hyung, that’s your problem. You think of them as women and that’s why you sometimes say things like that and that’s why it’s a mess.”

Sometimes Sunggyu doesn’t understand Dongwoo any more than he understands women. “What, am I supposed to think of them as men?” He tries not to be dry and sarcastic when he’s with Dongwoo, but sometimes it comes out anyways.

“Yes! Well, no, not _as_ men, but _like_ men.”

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means that women aren’t women first. They’re people first. And each one of them is different. There isn’t anything you can say about all women that’s true of all of them, so you shouldn’t even try. Just look at each one and see what’s special about her. Don’t make assumptions about her because she’s a woman, don’t think, ‘Well, she’s a woman so she must like whatever.’ That’s not how it works, hyung. Women are just people, but when you look at them you see ‘woman’ and so you say stupid things. Not all women want fancy purses, no matter that you think all of them secretly do. Some women are manipulative, but it’s not because they’re women, it’s because some people are manipulative and it’s no worse in a woman than in a man, so don’t use words that make it sound like it is. Look how different Howon is from Sungjong and Sungjong is from Myungsoo. They’re all men. Women are like that, too. You just have to remember that.”

Sunggyu’s never known anyone who loves women as much as Dongwoo does. Not in the loud, obvious way that Sungyeol does or the almost painful way Woohyun turns himself inside out to please them. Dongwoo just…likes them, appreciates them, understands them. All of them are unique and special to him; he sees something beautiful in women Sunggyu wouldn’t look at twice. He can always find something amazing about them, even in ones where Sunggyu sees nothing at all.

Sunggyu likes women, is attracted to them, has had female friends, has been in love once or twice. He thinks he feels about them the way most guys do. But somehow that falls far short of how Dongwoo loves them. 

“You’re going to be a really great husband, Dongwoo.”

Dongwoo laughs now, his regular, loud laugh, mouth open endearingly too wide and his lap shaking with it. “I can’t even get a girlfriend, hyung.”

Ah. That reminds him. He’s been distracted by the whole scandal thing, but he’d been meaning to take care of Dongwoo. He shouldn’t have let his own problems get in the way. 

He cracks his eyes open, wincing at the onslaught of light, blinks until the big colored dots disappear. He sits up, removing his legs from Dongwoo’s lap and scooting close to him, bringing his hand up to cup Dongwoo’s cheek. Dongwoo’s eyes go wide and startled like they always do—how many times now has Sunggyu done this and Dongwoo is still surprised every time?—and Sunggyu lets out a little chuckle, his first since the scandal broke, before brushing his lips against Dongwoo’s.

Dongwoo has nice lips, thick and plush, and there’s something so comforting about kissing him, about getting close enough to smell only Dongwoo’s familiar scent. It’s not like kissing a girl at all, not exciting or arousing, but it’s so, so comforting, and maybe that’s what allows Sunggyu to do this at all. 

Dongwoo drops his eyes when Sunggyu pulls back, his cheeks flushed. “You don’t have to, hyung.” His voice is rougher now, but still soft. “I know you don’t—you don’t have to—“

“I know, Dongwoo.” 

He eases Dongwoo back onto the bed, hovers over him to kiss him deep and run a soothing hand down his bare arm. Dongwoo squirms underneath him, makes lots of little begging sounds into the kiss. The first few times, Sunggyu hadn’t kissed him at all; the very thought of it made him uncomfortable, because kissing was as much about romance as it was about sex, and this isn’t about romance. But Dongwoo had wordlessly begged for kisses, pulling Sunggy up to him in a silent plea that told Sunggyu clearly that if they were going to do this at all, that Dongwoo needed to be kissed. Sunggyu’s made his peace with it and even enjoys it in its own way. It’s comfortable, and it helps Dongwoo.

Dongwoo lets himself be stripped of his clothes and laid back down on the bed, and, just as every time before, Sunggyu is struck by how passive he is. Dongwoo wouldn’t be like this with a woman, Sunggyu knows. Dongwoo, with his joyful intensity, would be at the very least an equal participant if not a leader. He would be so _into_ sex, would be totally consumed with it, with communicating with his body and making the woman he was with feel as good as he possibly could. It would be like when he dances. That’s what it would be like.

But that’s not what it’s like with Sunggyu. With Sunggyu, Dongwoo kisses back, but other than that, he doesn’t touch, he doesn’t reach out. He lets Sunggyu run his hands over his torso—a soothing gesture, more than anything—lets Sunggyu wiggle down between his legs, lets Sunggyu take him into his mouth. He moans and twitches at first, but once Sunggyu’s tongue and lips have coaxed him to hardness and he’s headed towards release, he becomes quiet and almost scarily still except for the rocking motion of his hips, his face set in a map of total concentration that always leaves Sunggyu a little bit awed.

Sunggyu knows he shouldn’t be doing this. Neither one of them are attracted to men, for one thing, but more than that, it’s just wrong. Sunggyu’s heard his pastor preach more than one sermon on how wrong this is, and really he hadn’t even needed the sermons; it had always seemed distasteful to him even in theory, something he didn’t even like to think about. Men and women fit together, it’s obvious. Sunggyu knows there are people in the industry who are gay, but he mostly ignores it, determined to mind his own business about things like this, but he’d never felt anything but disgust at the thought of men together, even if he wasn’t one to go around saying things like that.

But this doesn’t disgust him. He thinks it’s because it’s Dongwoo, and Dongwoo is special, and if this is what Dongwoo needs, this is what Sunggyu will give him. 

He’s so, so tactile, their sweet Dongwoo. So present in his body, so aware of it all the time. It makes him a great dancer, it makes him reach out for hugs and to squeeze someone’s butt without really thinking about it. But it also makes him need _more_ , need physical release in a way Sunggyu hasn’t encountered in anyone else. He knows sexual frustration—knows it well firsthand and from living in a dorm with six other young men. But the rest of them can make do with their hands, a porn stash, exercise, all the things that substitute. But none of those seem enough for Dongwoo, and though he never complains, they can all tell when he gets a particular kind of twitchy. Sunggyu had watched it for years, starting in their trainee days, watched as a sort of pressure seemed to build up in Dongwoo until he was surprised Dongwoo wasn’t crying out in pain from it. 

At the beginning, Sunggyu had been startled by the intensity of Dongwoo’s need, but his mind had quickly turned to how to take care of it. Nothing presented itself, though: there wasn’t time for girlfriends even pre-debut and after that there were fan expectations to deal with on top of busy schedules. Sunggyu had seriously considered trying to find a girl for something casual, but the risks seemed too great. When he found himself pondering calling an escort he wondered what had become of his life. Sex was special and powerful, something for a man and a woman who were in love and committed to each other—preferably married—to do together. That was what he’d always been taught, what he instinctively believed. But somehow that answer didn’t seem to suffice for Dongwoo.

Dongwoo would love to have a girlfriend, to be in love, to be committed. All of them know it. Sometimes Sunggyu thinks Dongwoo wants that more than all the rest of them combined, even Sungyeol with his constant whining about not having a girlfriend. But they all know it isn’t an option, not with the lives they lead. And sooner or later—later, actually, it took a long, long time—Sunggyu came to the conclusion that someone needed to help Dongwoo, and that he would have to do it himself.

He’s the leader, after all, and Dongwoo’s only hyung. And Dongwoo gives so much to him, endless emotional support of a kind Sunggyu’s never found in anyone else. It’s only right that Sunggyu should give him this, if this is what he needs. It’s not like any of the others could give it. Sometimes he thinks Myungsoo would be more than willing to take on this particular assignment, but Myungsoo is still so young in some ways and Sunggyu is pretty sure he hasn’t got himself figured out and that letting him loose on Dongwoo would only end up in an even bigger mess and probably with Myungsoo crying. So it’s Sunggyu’s responsibility as leader and it’s one he takes on without complaint. 

The thought of it had been gross, when he first decided to do it, but the reality isn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought. Sure, the first time had been awkward and uncomfortable for both of them, Dongwoo perilously near tears the entire time and telling him again and again that he didn’t have to. But Sunggyu had been determined, especially after he saw how much more relaxed Dongwoo seemed after it was all over, and now he does it without hesitance, noting silently when Dongwoo’s restlessness builds too high and finding a little time to help him. Dongwoo sometimes seems stiff and awkward afterwards, guilt in his eyes, but it’s been going on long enough that Sunggyu has convinced him that it doesn’t change anything between them. Sunggyu would never let it. 

It becomes easier each time, and Sunggyu knows he’s getting better at it—better at giving _blowjobs_ , for fuck’s sake, something he’d never even have dreamed he’d ever do. It’s not particularly pleasant, and it’s sometimes physically a challenge still because Dongwoo is so large, but it’s not terrible either, and there’s something satisfying about feeling Dongwoo’s body tense up, his back arc, and the long, keening sound he lets out when Sunggyu removes his mouth and strokes him to completion.

Sunggyu cleans up his hand and Dongwoo with his t-shirt, tosses it aside and climbs up to lay down alongside him. Dongwoo is still panting harder than he does after dance practice, eyes glazed over and sweat shining on his skin. Sunggyu brushes his damp hair out of his eyes and presses a kiss to his forehead. “Better?”

Dongwoo always looks so abashed, and it’s heartmeltingly cute. It wouldn’t be like this with a woman, either—there wouldn’t be any embarrassment and Dongwoo would probably be giddy happy in the afterglow, cuddly and joyful. But this isn’t what either of them would choose and sometimes Dongwoo seems so, so aware of that.

“Thank you, hyung,” he says, voice rough, as he turns towards Sunggyu and buries his head in Sunggyu’s chest, hiding his face. Sunggyu wraps his arms around Dongwoo, holds him close. It should feel weird, Dongwoo naked against him and him full clothed, but nothing feels weird with Dongwoo. It’s Dongwoo.

“I’m really sorry you can’t have a girlfriend, Dongwoo. If I could get that for you, I would.”

Dongwoo’s voice is muffled against his chest. “It’s not your fault, hyung.” 

Sunggyu runs his fingers through Dongwoo’s hair, feeling Dongwoo’s chest rise and fall, slower now, relaxing. “I know. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“A lot of things would be nice.”

“Mmm. Hey, Dongwoo?”

Dongwoo raises his head now. “Yeah?”

“Were you serious about me asking you? About what I shouldn’t say about women?”

Dongwoo just looks at him for a moment and then his wide grin breaks out. “And to women, hyung.”

“Don’t think I won’t take you up on that.”

“Don’t think I won’t tell you you’re being a jerk.”

“Oh, thank you so much, you’re so generous.”

Dongwoo’s still smiling, but his eyes hold a hint of seriousness now. “It’s the least I can do.”

Sunggyu shakes his head. “We take care of each other. We’re family. We’re Infinite. That’s what we do.”

Sunggyu has done all sorts of things for Infinite that he never thought he’d do, ranging from dancing in sync in ugly stage costumes to taking care of Dongwoo’s sexual needs. He’ll probably do many, many more before this all comes to an end. To be able to sing for a living with his friends beside him, almost anything is worth it. An apology, one he means, for something stupid he said? That’s the least he can do. 

And from now on he'll be better.


End file.
